Still not tickable but potentially improving.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/06/27/3254753.htm
One of New Zealand's top surgeons has operated on
an ailing emperor penguin found on a beach near Wellington, some
3,000 kilometres from its Antarctic home.
More used to dealing with sick humans than poorly penguins,
surgeon John Wyeth performed a delicate two-hour operation on the
bird, nicknamed Happy Feet, which has suffered declining health
since it appeared last week.
Assisted by a six-person medical team, Dr Wyeth performed an
endoscopy to remove twigs, stones and sand which had been clogging
the penguin's gut, feeding a tiny camera down its throat then
looping a line around the debris.
"It [was] a memorable experience," said Dr Wyeth, the head of
gastroenterology at Wellington Hospital and a past president of
the New Zealand Society of Gastroenterology.
"I wasn't familiar with the anatomy... if I did a similar
procedure in a human it would take me 10 minutes."
Only the second emperor penguin ever recorded in New Zealand,
Happy Feet was taken to Wellington Zoo last Friday after it began
eating sand in a bid to cool down.
Emperor penguins in the Antarctic eat snow when they get too hot.
The zoo's veterinary manager, Lisa Argilla, says the penguin,
thought to be a young male, appears to have come through the
surgery intact.
But she added: "He's still not out of the woods."
She says the bird, which is used sub-zero climate, is being kept
in an air-conditioned room carpeted with crushed ice to cool it in
the relative warmth of New Zealand, where temperatures are
currently around 10 degrees Celsius.
Wildlife experts have ruled out flying the penguin back to
Antarctica as the frozen continent is in the midst of winter and
engulfed by 24-hour darkness.
Ms Argilla says if it can be nursed back to health, the best
option may be releasing Happy Feet into sub-Antarctic waters south
of New Zealand in the hope that it will swim home.
But she says the penguin is underweight following its long swim
north and intestinal trauma, meaning it is not yet ready to be
released into the wild.
"It's hard to say how long it would take, but it would probably
be a few months," she told reporters.
Ms Agilla says staff at the zoo have become attached to the bird
and are heartened by the level of international interest in its
fate.
"It's really awesome to see that we've pretty much got the world
behind us - a little bit of pressure but we're doing our best,"
she said.
Dr Wyeth, who volunteered to operate on the penguin after
learning about its plight, has rejected suggestions that if it
could not survive in New Zealand then nature should be left to
take its course.
"I think the important thing in this world is humanity and
caring, and if we don't show that, it doesn't reflect very well on
our society," he said.
The emperor penguin is the largest species of the distinctive
waddling creature and can grow up to 1.15 metres tall.
The reason for Happy Feet's appearance in New Zealand remains a
mystery, although experts say emperor penguins take to the open
sea during the Antarctic summer and this one may have simply
wandered further than most.
